Monday, April 24, 2006

Liora Elias

Just yesterday I heard from my father the sad news, that Liora Elias-Bar Levav passed away. She had been sick with leukemia for years. Her MA was devoted to a copy of the Mekhilta de-Rabi Yishmael whose pages are scattered throughout the Genizah. Her doctorate was meant to deal with Mekhilta de-Rabi Shim'on bar Yohai, Masekhta de-Nezikin. I heard from friends about a lecture she gave several months ago, where she made the brave claim that the Mekhilta de-Rashbi is difficult to understand because it was badly edited (and not simply because our text is defficient).Last time I saw Liora, she was walking in the San Simon park with her daughter, with a hat and leaning on a cane.TNZBH.

In other news, the Schocken Institute has published a couple of new titles. The time I spent working on one of them is a period of my life I regret.

The new batch of digitized rare books at the JNUL includes the first printing of the Sefer Mitsvot Gadol. One of those books that Moses Marx studied, which may or may not have been printed in Rome in or around 1480.

Sad to hear about Liora. She was my teacher in the Talmud Mechina course at Hebrew University in 1993-94. I was in a special section for non-native Hebrew speakers (an interesting mix of Americans, Germans, and Israeli Arabs) but the Israeli Jewish students), but nobody could detect any way in which Liora was "dumbing down" her teaching, either linguistically or substantively. She was a wonderful teacher. May her memory be a blessing.

I was in a special section for non-native Hebrew speakers (an interesting mix of Americans, Germans, and Israeli Arabs), but neither we nor the Israeli Jewish students could detect any way in which Liora was "dumbing down" her teaching, either linguistically or substantively.